Beginning with New Year's Day 1864, another busy day in the office for Abraham Lincoln, this book by the author of Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War follows the last full year of the president's life and work. Charles Bracelen Flood offers a unique perspective on Lincoln's working experience, as the president makes decisions on the war in the face of Union army disasters, conducts a reelection campaign that seems all but doomed, and sets the stage for westward expansion through the Homestead Act, while also addressing the concerns of individual citizens who regularly petition him.

"A brilliant, compelling account of Lincoln's dramatic final full year of life—a year in which the war finally turned in the Union's favor and Lincoln faced a tough battle for re-election. After Union defeats at the Battle of Cold Harbor and the siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Jubal Early came within five miles of Washington, D.C., before he was beaten back; General Sherman's September victory at Atlanta followed, with his bloody march to the sea. At the same time, Lincoln found himself running against his own secretary of the treasury, Salmon Chase, for the Republican nomination, and then against the Democrat (and general) George B. McClellan for the presidency. Lincoln won by a narrow popular majority, but a significant electoral majority. At the close of 1864, as Lincoln celebrated both his re-election and the coming end of the war, John Wilkes Booth laid down an ambitious plan for kidnapping that soon evolved into a map for murder. Combining a novelist's flair with the authority and deep knowledge of a scholar, Flood artfully integrates this complex web of storylines."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)